Indeed, the way of the dodo -- like the American educational system. In its place, a Satanic hellhole of perfidious opporession. The greater question here is not whether Jon Katz is related to the producers... but whether, in this post-9/11 era, any of us can truly say that we are more than a few degrees of separation from the producers ourselves? And what does that say for our crazy, mixed-up culture, when so many of our voices are forever silenced, gagged by forces every bit as insidious as the MPAA itself? I say here's to the new heroes of this tumultuous age, so powerfully exemplified by the likes of Jon Katz and the heart-wrenching experiences to which he was subjected in this, the cruelest of online forums.
Look, if Microsoft wanted to bring Windows and Linux together, why didn't they do it when they partnered with Corel around six years ago?
I can't take full credit for this comment -- the point was made by someone else on/. in another thread -- but, look. To say this agreement with Novell is really anything about interoperability smacks me as being pretty disingenuous.
What company has full and complete access to all Windows source code and complete and thorough documentation for all Microsoft protocols? Microsoft does. In addition, like every other person in the world, Microsoft also has full and complete access to Linux kernel source code and all the protocols and methods used on Linux systems. And this has been true since, what? 1991? And Microsoft also has massive resources in terms of developer bodies to throw at software projects. So if there's any company on earth that could "bring Windows and Linux closer together," it's Microsoft. Why the hell would it need Novell to work on interoperability?
That's great that you abuse the copyright system like that, but allowing you to censor who can and can not use your works is not the goal of copyright. It's not why we spend millions of taxpayer's dollars to keep this broken system alive. The sole, and only, reason why copyright exists is to give the creators of artistic works the financial motivation to create their works.
Again you appear to be talking out of your ass. Would you care to provide a reference that supports this claim?
The United States Constitution grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." It makes no reference to financial gain whatsoever.
Prior to this statement, copyright law in the West largely derives from the Statue of Anne of 1710. The text of that act begins: "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other
Persons, have of late frequently taken
the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting,
and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books,
and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of
such Books and Writings, to their
very great Detriment, and too often
to the Ruin of them and their Families..." You can intuit a financial meaning into that statement, but there is none explicit. It merely says that authors may be granted the exclusive right of control over their own works. It is very explicit in its intent that third parties should be prevented from reprinting works without the permission of their authors, however.
Your own more fiscally-oriented leanings may be very modern and libertarian, but they do not in fact reflect the full purpose of copyright law as it has been drafted over the last several centuries.
Much as I love Jethro Tull, I can't agree with Ian Anderson's position on this issue.
...especially considering that there's a much more effective intellectual property defense he could mount. All he needs to do is patent the system and method of playing a flute while standing on one leg, et voila! The legacy of Tull is protected forever.
If you can't make money from it then it shouldn't be under copyright. That's the purpose of copyright, to give people a monetary incentive to create new works.
I disagree. You're falling into the trap of viewing all of society through the lens of economics, which is a ploy that a great many politicians have foisted upon us but does not reflect the realities of human existence.
I have personally registered copyrighted works that I make available for everyone to look at on the Web, for free, from which I don't make a dime. That doesn't mean I want some corporation to have free license to take those works and publish them for profit, however -- or to publish them in a context that makes it look like my work supports some position that I don't agree with.
In this case the copyright is a protective measure. It's there to ensure that the fruits of my labor are used in the way that I choose, period.
Let's say, for example, that I paint a hypothetical painting of an idyllic English landscape, and in the background is the ominous tower of a nuclear reactor. Presumably I mean this painting to be some artistic commentary on society, with a very specific meaning that I choose to impart to the painting. If there was no copyright on this work (because I'm not making money from it) there would be nothing stopping BP from running it as an ad in a magazine, along with a slogan reading something like, "Don't let the crazies in Parliament do this to your countryside. Support fossil fuels." Make no mistake, copyright is the only thing stopping someone from doing this.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation of new works. Anything more than 10 years (in my view) is actually counterproductive.
MMmmm, I think that number is maybe a little too restrictive. If you're talking about 10 years from publication, maybe that's one thing. Right now, copyright begins at the time a work is created, whether it has been published or not. You can debate whether that's a good thing, but I for one believe it is.
Also, have you ever heard of a popular album that didn't really "take off" with the public until a year or two after it was released? The songs might not have been heard all that much due to the label's poor marketing or mismanagement of the artist, but under the 10-year copyright clause, the net effect is the same: two years of the artist's legally-allowed "monopoly" time -- the time in which the artist is allowed to profit from the work -- wasted.
The bottom line is that it takes longer for a work to make it into the hands of the public than some people realize. 95 years for copyright seems a ridiculously long time, but 10 seems a trifle short.
I honestly hadn't thought about it. I was merely trying to point out that just because a company can't trade in information it collects today doesn't mean it won't be able to sell that information tomorrow.
As to your question, though, I think you're right... it sounds like they might be referring to this statute, but based on my read it doesn't apply to any situation where an individual hands over a driver's license to a commercial business willingly (e.g. a club).
It's pretty clear that most people don't want copyright, simply look around at how much respect copyright law is given. Shit, even granny is breaking copyright these days.
Go read dailyrotten.com for a few weeks. Based on the news stories they have on there, it seems like a lot of people are having sex with children these days. And photographing them, and kidnapping them, and selling them into prostitution... based on how much respect people have for those laws, is it fair to say it's time for reform?
PS. No, I am not trying to equate copyright infringement with child rape. I am merely trying to point out how totally specious your arguments about law/society/etc are. Yes, it's easy for any 19-year-old college student to decide how the world ought to work. Making that happen through the process of law is just slightly more difficult.
PPS. And yes, for the record, I am a member of that society you love to talk about, and I DO want copyright law. I break that law all the time myself. Reform? Sure. But as for abolishing it completely? Not on your life.
Copyright is nothing more than paying Bob to go kick the shit out of anyone who does something we don't like.
How is this any different than paying Bob (i.e. the cops) to go kick the shit out of Harold, who happens to have raped your 11 year old niece? Presumably Harold feels the same about age of consent as you do about copyrights. I guess Harold's argument is as valid as yours.
What if, ya know, society doesn't want to pay for a police force to stop people from doing what they want to do with the work?
Apparently by "society" you mean you, and in this case, the answer is "tough shit"... because, yes, in this case we as a society have enacted copyright laws and, yes, we do pay law enforcement agencies, district attorneys and the like to enforce those copyrights. The fact that you (sniff) don't want to is in no way representative of the wants of "society."
If the purpose really is to reward valuable invention (vs. obvious extension) then a simple answer is this: In the event of someone re-inventing something which has been previously awarded a patent, with no evidence of copying, there should be two options available to the patent holder.
The "no evidence of copying" is the sticky part. You're back to a system that requires that patent examiners be shrewd enough to understand the fundamental difference between one patent and the next. What would obviously end up happening in such a system is Amazon finds out IBM has a patent on something it wants to do (patents are published, public documents), says, "hey, that's a great idea!" and then "invents" its own way of doing it. Voila! Instead of paying IBM to license the patent, Amazon gets to add itself to IBM's patent and take half of IBM's fees. You can see where patents would quickly become an anti-competitive weapon of an order even greater than they are becoming today.
In today's world, the outcome of these patent lawsuits between big companies, more often than not, is some kind of licensing agreement. It will more than likely be a cross-licensing agreement... so IBM says it's OK for Amazon to use its patent, provided IBM can add One-Click shopping to its Web site, or something of the sort. It's not as if IBM really wants to put Amazon out of business. It just wants to keep the money moving from hand to hand, with some of it staying at IBM for a while.
Does the stabilization of methane levels mean they're now feeding beano to cattle?
This would be funnier if it weren't partially true. Australian farmers have been experimenting with a "vaccine" that stimulates the immune systems of cows to kill some of the natural microbes in their digestive tracts -- the ones responsible for releasing much of the methane. Given that they're messing with cows' biology in this way, I sure hope it doesn't turn out that cow-methane isn't the problem we think it is.
The irony of this particular thread is that Microsoft already perceives these choices as a problem, and from what I am told, Windows Vista will no longer give you these options. You will just close the lid and be done with it. Initially it will suspend to RAM, then go into a mode like Hibernate, and after a little while longer, it will almost entirely shut down -- but not quite. It will still use a trickle of energy so that when you open your laptop back up again, you'll be back to where you left off. It will also be able to do things like checking your e-mail and displaying new messages on a secondary, external LCD screen without powering on the whole machine. I have yet to see all this work in a real-world situation, nor do I know how much additional drain it places on a laptop battery, but this is what I have been told is how it will work when the Vista laptops start arriving next year.
This was modded funny, but it's an interesting point. I've been able to tour a couple big HPC type facilities and I've spoken to some academic types who were involved in other projects. From what I can tell, the HPC community is all over Linux. Linux is pretty much the de facto platform of choice, for all sorts of reasons. I understand that a lot of people in the life sciences were enamored of Apple's later-model PowerPC hardware for HPC applications, but even they would tend to reformat and install Yellow Dog. Wouldn't it be a shame if Sun got overlooked for this contract because it insisted on pushing Solaris?
And then again, might it not be a shame again... because OpenSolaris is nearly as free (in every sense) these days as Linux, and it has some great technology in it, including a battle-hardened networking stack.
A poster above questioned whether the companies that get awarded these DARPA contracts really see any benefit from it. But a major government HPC contract running on Solaris could potentially be a big marketing boost for Sun... too bad it came to naught.
Psst, they do, it is just that nobody invited you.
AHA! So, see, this makes a little more sense. What you seem to be saying is that people like to go and stand in line for these things because it makes them feel exclusive... like, the fact that someone gave them the opportunity to spend money to stand in line, wondering if they're going to get in, makes them... better than other people?
Again, though, while it makes sense from a "people are lame" perspective, I still don't really understand why intelligent people would do it. I feel like you're all being suckered. But then, I guess I was never much of a dancer. If going dancing is something you want to do, I guess you can't really do it in your living room and have it be the same.
Uh, I guess you've never tried to go to Ruby Skye in SF. Line out the door and around the block.
Sure, but like I said... ask them where they're from. It's one thing to drive all the way to the city to wait in line for an hour if you live in Pleasanton and don't know any better.
In my younger days (I'm a ripe old 29 now), if a blood sample would bump me to the front of the line at a hot club in LA, I'd have gladly given it up.
GAH! I've never understood this attitude. In San Francisco, we don't really have this "hot club" phenomenon. They're trying to pull it off in the North Beach neighborhood, but that pretty much draws exclusively bridge-and-tunnel clientèle. With so many things to do and so many places to go in this city, most locals can't imagine what could possibly make it worth waiting in line to get into a club. Any club! And then I hear these stories about being made to wait by some beefcake bouncer, only to be allowed entry half an hour later and... find out the club is pretty much empty. What gives? Why do you people keep going back to these places? What could possibly be in there that makes it worth it? I know it's not the music. And don't say "pussy," because in my experience any major metropolitan area is pretty much choked with good-looking women, wherever you go.
Walking over to Wal-Mart, I paid cash. The computer asked them to check (not swipe) ID. Cashier saw I was "old enough", hit OK, and I was on my merry way.
And therein, folks, lies the beauty of the free market.
In many states, it is ILLEGAL for businesses to have caller ID.
I don't know of any state in which that is true. And it seems extremely unlikely... remember how T-Mobile voicemail boxes could be hacked because the default was to allow access without a password if your Caller ID matched the account's phone number? How could T-Mobile even offer such a service if they were forbidden to have Caller ID in certain states?
Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that telemarketers are forbidden to block Caller ID?
IANAL, but I did work at mp3.com. AFAIK, any copying of copywrited work in a commercial setting violates copywright.
No, any copying of copyrighted work violates copyright if it's done without the permission of the author. It doesn't matter if it's done in a commercial setting or not. If they were jumpy about it at MP3.com, it was probably because the penalties for willful copyright violation are more stringent if it's done as part of a commercial enterprise. In other words, if it were proven that MP3.com had repeatedly violated copyright in the course of its business and it knew that it was doing so, MP3.com would be in a lotta trouble. It makes sense for businesses to cover their asses as much as humanly possible.
Not to feed the trolls, but... obviously, the idea is to allow current Microsoft Office users who already use macros written in VB to take those macros with them when they switch to OOo.
Not really, it's just an issue of semantics (the length of the copyright term). It's not a fundamentally different thing at all.
Sure it is. The grandparent was implying that no sane person wants copyrights. I'm telling you that I am perfectly sane and I do want them. I think the concept of copyright is perfectly reasonable and copyrights are beneficial to society. Grotesquely distorted copyright laws, on the other hand -- like most grotesquely distorted things, I suppose -- start to look ugly, but that seems to be a different issue.
Citrix offers one huge advantage in the world of healthcare IT: When the thin client is not connected, no patient data exists on a thin client machine.
Yeah, but that's true of any Web-based CRM system, too, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
You snooze, you lose. ;-)
Indeed, the way of the dodo -- like the American educational system. In its place, a Satanic hellhole of perfidious opporession. The greater question here is not whether Jon Katz is related to the producers... but whether, in this post-9/11 era, any of us can truly say that we are more than a few degrees of separation from the producers ourselves? And what does that say for our crazy, mixed-up culture, when so many of our voices are forever silenced, gagged by forces every bit as insidious as the MPAA itself? I say here's to the new heroes of this tumultuous age, so powerfully exemplified by the likes of Jon Katz and the heart-wrenching experiences to which he was subjected in this, the cruelest of online forums.
I can't take full credit for this comment -- the point was made by someone else on /. in another thread -- but, look. To say this agreement with Novell is really anything about interoperability smacks me as being pretty disingenuous.
What company has full and complete access to all Windows source code and complete and thorough documentation for all Microsoft protocols? Microsoft does. In addition, like every other person in the world, Microsoft also has full and complete access to Linux kernel source code and all the protocols and methods used on Linux systems. And this has been true since, what? 1991? And Microsoft also has massive resources in terms of developer bodies to throw at software projects. So if there's any company on earth that could "bring Windows and Linux closer together," it's Microsoft. Why the hell would it need Novell to work on interoperability?
Again you appear to be talking out of your ass. Would you care to provide a reference that supports this claim?
The United States Constitution grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." It makes no reference to financial gain whatsoever.
Prior to this statement, copyright law in the West largely derives from the Statue of Anne of 1710. The text of that act begins: "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families..." You can intuit a financial meaning into that statement, but there is none explicit. It merely says that authors may be granted the exclusive right of control over their own works. It is very explicit in its intent that third parties should be prevented from reprinting works without the permission of their authors, however.
Your own more fiscally-oriented leanings may be very modern and libertarian, but they do not in fact reflect the full purpose of copyright law as it has been drafted over the last several centuries.
I disagree. You're falling into the trap of viewing all of society through the lens of economics, which is a ploy that a great many politicians have foisted upon us but does not reflect the realities of human existence.
I have personally registered copyrighted works that I make available for everyone to look at on the Web, for free, from which I don't make a dime. That doesn't mean I want some corporation to have free license to take those works and publish them for profit, however -- or to publish them in a context that makes it look like my work supports some position that I don't agree with. In this case the copyright is a protective measure. It's there to ensure that the fruits of my labor are used in the way that I choose, period.
Let's say, for example, that I paint a hypothetical painting of an idyllic English landscape, and in the background is the ominous tower of a nuclear reactor. Presumably I mean this painting to be some artistic commentary on society, with a very specific meaning that I choose to impart to the painting. If there was no copyright on this work (because I'm not making money from it) there would be nothing stopping BP from running it as an ad in a magazine, along with a slogan reading something like, "Don't let the crazies in Parliament do this to your countryside. Support fossil fuels." Make no mistake, copyright is the only thing stopping someone from doing this.
MMmmm, I think that number is maybe a little too restrictive. If you're talking about 10 years from publication, maybe that's one thing. Right now, copyright begins at the time a work is created, whether it has been published or not. You can debate whether that's a good thing, but I for one believe it is.
Also, have you ever heard of a popular album that didn't really "take off" with the public until a year or two after it was released? The songs might not have been heard all that much due to the label's poor marketing or mismanagement of the artist, but under the 10-year copyright clause, the net effect is the same: two years of the artist's legally-allowed "monopoly" time -- the time in which the artist is allowed to profit from the work -- wasted.
The bottom line is that it takes longer for a work to make it into the hands of the public than some people realize. 95 years for copyright seems a ridiculously long time, but 10 seems a trifle short.
I honestly hadn't thought about it. I was merely trying to point out that just because a company can't trade in information it collects today doesn't mean it won't be able to sell that information tomorrow.
... it sounds like they might be referring to this statute, but based on my read it doesn't apply to any situation where an individual hands over a driver's license to a commercial business willingly (e.g. a club).
As to your question, though, I think you're right
Go read dailyrotten.com for a few weeks. Based on the news stories they have on there, it seems like a lot of people are having sex with children these days. And photographing them, and kidnapping them, and selling them into prostitution ... based on how much respect people have for those laws, is it fair to say it's time for reform?
PS. No, I am not trying to equate copyright infringement with child rape. I am merely trying to point out how totally specious your arguments about law/society/etc are. Yes, it's easy for any 19-year-old college student to decide how the world ought to work. Making that happen through the process of law is just slightly more difficult.
PPS. And yes, for the record, I am a member of that society you love to talk about, and I DO want copyright law. I break that law all the time myself. Reform? Sure. But as for abolishing it completely? Not on your life.
How is this any different than paying Bob (i.e. the cops) to go kick the shit out of Harold, who happens to have raped your 11 year old niece? Presumably Harold feels the same about age of consent as you do about copyrights. I guess Harold's argument is as valid as yours.
Apparently by "society" you mean you, and in this case, the answer is "tough shit" ... because, yes, in this case we as a society have enacted copyright laws and, yes, we do pay law enforcement agencies, district attorneys and the like to enforce those copyrights. The fact that you (sniff) don't want to is in no way representative of the wants of "society."
The "no evidence of copying" is the sticky part. You're back to a system that requires that patent examiners be shrewd enough to understand the fundamental difference between one patent and the next. What would obviously end up happening in such a system is Amazon finds out IBM has a patent on something it wants to do (patents are published, public documents), says, "hey, that's a great idea!" and then "invents" its own way of doing it. Voila! Instead of paying IBM to license the patent, Amazon gets to add itself to IBM's patent and take half of IBM's fees. You can see where patents would quickly become an anti-competitive weapon of an order even greater than they are becoming today.
In today's world, the outcome of these patent lawsuits between big companies, more often than not, is some kind of licensing agreement. It will more than likely be a cross-licensing agreement ... so IBM says it's OK for Amazon to use its patent, provided IBM can add One-Click shopping to its Web site, or something of the sort. It's not as if IBM really wants to put Amazon out of business. It just wants to keep the money moving from hand to hand, with some of it staying at IBM for a while.
This would be funnier if it weren't partially true. Australian farmers have been experimenting with a "vaccine" that stimulates the immune systems of cows to kill some of the natural microbes in their digestive tracts -- the ones responsible for releasing much of the methane. Given that they're messing with cows' biology in this way, I sure hope it doesn't turn out that cow-methane isn't the problem we think it is.
The irony of this particular thread is that Microsoft already perceives these choices as a problem, and from what I am told, Windows Vista will no longer give you these options. You will just close the lid and be done with it. Initially it will suspend to RAM, then go into a mode like Hibernate, and after a little while longer, it will almost entirely shut down -- but not quite. It will still use a trickle of energy so that when you open your laptop back up again, you'll be back to where you left off. It will also be able to do things like checking your e-mail and displaying new messages on a secondary, external LCD screen without powering on the whole machine. I have yet to see all this work in a real-world situation, nor do I know how much additional drain it places on a laptop battery, but this is what I have been told is how it will work when the Vista laptops start arriving next year.
This was modded funny, but it's an interesting point. I've been able to tour a couple big HPC type facilities and I've spoken to some academic types who were involved in other projects. From what I can tell, the HPC community is all over Linux. Linux is pretty much the de facto platform of choice, for all sorts of reasons. I understand that a lot of people in the life sciences were enamored of Apple's later-model PowerPC hardware for HPC applications, but even they would tend to reformat and install Yellow Dog. Wouldn't it be a shame if Sun got overlooked for this contract because it insisted on pushing Solaris?
... because OpenSolaris is nearly as free (in every sense) these days as Linux, and it has some great technology in it, including a battle-hardened networking stack.
... too bad it came to naught.
And then again, might it not be a shame again
A poster above questioned whether the companies that get awarded these DARPA contracts really see any benefit from it. But a major government HPC contract running on Solaris could potentially be a big marketing boost for Sun
AHA! So, see, this makes a little more sense. What you seem to be saying is that people like to go and stand in line for these things because it makes them feel exclusive... like, the fact that someone gave them the opportunity to spend money to stand in line, wondering if they're going to get in, makes them ... better than other people?
Again, though, while it makes sense from a "people are lame" perspective, I still don't really understand why intelligent people would do it. I feel like you're all being suckered. But then, I guess I was never much of a dancer. If going dancing is something you want to do, I guess you can't really do it in your living room and have it be the same.
Sure, but like I said ... ask them where they're from. It's one thing to drive all the way to the city to wait in line for an hour if you live in Pleasanton and don't know any better.
Perhaps that should read, "while a federal law forbids selling or sharing data from drivers licenses for the time being..."
GAH! I've never understood this attitude. In San Francisco, we don't really have this "hot club" phenomenon. They're trying to pull it off in the North Beach neighborhood, but that pretty much draws exclusively bridge-and-tunnel clientèle. With so many things to do and so many places to go in this city, most locals can't imagine what could possibly make it worth waiting in line to get into a club. Any club! And then I hear these stories about being made to wait by some beefcake bouncer, only to be allowed entry half an hour later and ... find out the club is pretty much empty. What gives? Why do you people keep going back to these places? What could possibly be in there that makes it worth it? I know it's not the music. And don't say "pussy," because in my experience any major metropolitan area is pretty much choked with good-looking women, wherever you go.
And therein, folks, lies the beauty of the free market.
I don't know of any state in which that is true. And it seems extremely unlikely ... remember how T-Mobile voicemail boxes could be hacked because the default was to allow access without a password if your Caller ID matched the account's phone number? How could T-Mobile even offer such a service if they were forbidden to have Caller ID in certain states?
Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that telemarketers are forbidden to block Caller ID?
No, any copying of copyrighted work violates copyright if it's done without the permission of the author. It doesn't matter if it's done in a commercial setting or not. If they were jumpy about it at MP3.com, it was probably because the penalties for willful copyright violation are more stringent if it's done as part of a commercial enterprise. In other words, if it were proven that MP3.com had repeatedly violated copyright in the course of its business and it knew that it was doing so, MP3.com would be in a lotta trouble. It makes sense for businesses to cover their asses as much as humanly possible.
Not to feed the trolls, but ... obviously, the idea is to allow current Microsoft Office users who already use macros written in VB to take those macros with them when they switch to OOo.
Sure it is. The grandparent was implying that no sane person wants copyrights. I'm telling you that I am perfectly sane and I do want them. I think the concept of copyright is perfectly reasonable and copyrights are beneficial to society. Grotesquely distorted copyright laws, on the other hand -- like most grotesquely distorted things, I suppose -- start to look ugly, but that seems to be a different issue.
Yeah, but that's true of any Web-based CRM system, too, isn't it?